From: "Jamie Morgan" <jamie-AT-morganj58.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: values and social science
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:43:04 +0100


Hi Carrol, if the question is impossible rather than the answer complex and
non-determninistic the wouldn't that make values & beleifs unrelated to
truth claims and immanent ontological critique?

Isn't Lukes solution to the Marxist dilemma of ethics is to oppose human
emancipation and recht but not to deny that values are at least implicit in
Marx's realism?

Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox-AT-ilstu.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: values and social science


>
>
> rgroff-AT-yorku.ca wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Jamie asked, "Is a value best thought of as grounding  a belief and how
does
> > this accord with the openness of systems and the fallibility of
knowledge?
> >
>
> It seems to me, again kibbitzing from the sidelines, that this is an
> impossible question to ask, fro reasons Bertell Ollman gives in Chapter
> 4 of his _Alienation_. Here are a few paragraphs from that text:
>
> ******
>
>         There is still another objection to ascribing an ethic to Marx
> on the basis of his commitment to human fulfillment or any of the other
> goals listed.  This as that it is easily mistaken for a description of
> what Marx actually and daily does, rather than a way of viewing his
> work. Neither Taylor nor Maxmilien Rubel, who takes a similar position,
> sees Marx measuring each new question as it comes up alongside an
> absolute standard and deciding which position to take accordingly.  Yet,
> both men have been misunderstood in this way. <p. 44> This
> misunderstanding arises because what is called "ethics" is generally
> taken to involve a conscious choice; to act on the basis of a principle,
> under any guise, is to decide to do so.  An ethic assumes that for each
> question studied there was a period before the standard was applied when
> one's attitude was neutral, or at least less certain than afterwards;
> and also that there is a possibility that one could have chosen
> otherwise.
>
>         Robert Tucker rightly remarks that ethical inquiry (and hence
> ethics)is only possible on the basis of a suspended commitment.  But
> Marx never suspends his commitments; nor does he ever consciously choose
> to approve or disapprove; nor does it make any sense to say of the
> matters he studied that he might have judged otherwise.  Tucker's
> conclusion is that Marx is not an ethical, but a religious thinker with
> a "vision of the world as an arena of conflict between good and evil
> forces." However, if expressing approval and serving certain goals are
> insufficient grounds for ascribing an ethics to Marx, his conception of
> class struggle coupled with his vision of the future society are hardly
> enough to burden him with a religion.  But if Tucker is unlucky in the
> alternative he offers, his criticism of attempts to treat Marxism as an
> ethical theory or as a product of an ethical theory remains valid.
>
>         The foregoing remarks may be summarized as follows: all ethical
> systems, that is all those ways of thinking which are generally accepted
> as such, have a basis for judgement which lies outside that which is to
> be judged.  This results in a suspended commitment until the "facts"
> have been gathered and their relation to the standard for judgment
> clarified.  The evaluation, when it comes, is a matter of conscious
> choice.  Our problem then reduces itself to this: do we want to say of
> Marxism, where none of these things apply, that it either is or contains
> an ethical theory?  One might, but then the limited sense in which claim
> is meant would have to be made explicit.
>
>                                         II
>
> I prefer to say that Marx did not have an ethical theory.  But how then
> to explain the approval and disapproval which he expresses in his works,
> the fact that he sided with the proletariat and incited them to
> overthrow the system?  How, too, it may be asked, do <p. 45>I account
> for his attachment to the cause of humanity and to the ideas of
> communism and human fulfillment?  In asking such questions, however, one
> must be careful not to assume at the outset the form the answer must
> take.  For this is what happens if one is saying, "Here are two worlds,
> facts and values; how do you link them?" But to accept that reality is
> halved in this way is to admit failure from the start.  On the contrary,
> the relational conception which was discussed in the last two chapters
> required that Marx consider what was known, advocated, condemned or done
> by everyone, himself included, as internally related.  Every facet of
> the real world, and people's actions and thoughts as elements in it, are
> mutually dependent on each other for what they are, and must be
> understood accordingly.
>
>         The logical distinction which is said to exist between facts and
> values is founded on the belief that it is possible to conceive of one
> without the other.  Given a particular fact, the argument runs, one may
> without contradiction attach any value to it.  The fact itself does not
> entail a specific value.  Historically the view that moral beliefs are
> contingent has tended  to go along with the view that they are also
> arbitrary.  On this model, all judgment depends in the last instance on
> the independent set of values which each individual, for reasons best
> known to himself, brings to the situation.  The ethical premiss is not
> only a final arbiter but a mysterious one, defying sociological and even
> psychological analysis.  Though some recent defenders of orthodoxy have
> sought to muddle the distinction between fact and value with talk of its
> "context," "function,"  "real reference," "predisposition," etc., the
> logical line drawn in conception remains.  Yet, if one cannot conceive
> of anything one chooses to call a fact (because it is an open ended
> relation) without bringing in evaluative elements (and vice versa), the
> very problem orthodox thinkers have set out to answer cannot be
> posed.******
>
> Incidentally, it seems to me that this critique of "values" applies also
> to the concept of "spirituality." I have never been able to understand
> why materialists (and in particular _historical_ materialists) are so
> anxious to cling on to claims to spirituality, which seems to me to be a
> pale substitute for human solidarity in a social order which
> systematically negates solidarity.
>
> Carrol Cox
>
>
>
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>
>




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